


The Hope Only Of Empty Men

by leiascully



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, F/M, meme: Fics I'll Never Write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-18
Updated: 2007-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:17:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd just diet until it went away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hope Only Of Empty Men

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-S3  
> **Contains: Eating disorder**  
> A/N: For [**ijemanja**](http://ijemanja.livejournal.com/), from the "Things I'd Never Write" meme. Title stolen from [The Hollow Men](http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html) by T.S. Eliot. I know next to nothing about anorexia, but I tried to do my research. Please forgive me any glaring oddness.   
> Disclaimer: _House M.D._ and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, and Fox. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

She wasn't ever going to become a mother.

That was fine, she rationalized. She would have blown up like a balloon, like her mother, like her sister. Neither of them had ever recovered their figures, but she still had hers. She smoothed her blouse over her stomach. There was a little softness there, a remnant of her wishful thinking. She'd just diet until it went away. After all, like it or not, the hospital got donors or not based partly on her image. It was all a matter of control. She couldn't seem weak or soft. There were already whispers about a woman in a man's job. There always had been.

She ate less. She ran more. Her hipbones felt sharp against the tight fabric of her skirts, but there was still that softness between them. Soft places were vulnerable places. Tits and ass was all the softness she could afford. She had to make her body work for her.

She ate less. She ran more.

It was ecologically friendly, she rationalized. She was a not quite a small woman, not at five foot six in her stockings, but she could make her ecological footprint smaller. Less consumption. She could spend the extra grocery money on a new suit and give the rest to charity. It got easier and easier. No bagel in the morning. She still drank her tea and she choked down a salad at lunch (because House would notice if she never ate at the hospital, he noticed everything), but no pasta in the evening, no crockpot chili on the weekends. She went to the grocery store and turned her face away from the dairy case and the bakery. She swallowed vitamins (a doctor knew she needed nutrients, at least). There was a snack here, a small meal there, half-portions at donor dinners and charity events. She ate fruit sometimes but the sugar gave her headaches. She stood in front of the empty fridge at midnight and didn't want anything. There was no desire. At night she put on extra lotion to soothe the dryness of her skin and curled around her own bones for comfort.

Each pound that slipped away honed her confidence and her grief. So she was barren. Her blouses hung just right from her thin shoulders. She could see the structure of her face. It was clean and powerful. She liked it. The softness was almost gone. Instead there was a hollowness, a new resonance. She could feel the echoes inside herself and the way the blood raced through her veins.

She was working on the budgets in her office when House thumped through the door, banging it open with his cane and sprawling on her couch.

"You don't have a patient," she said with her forehead in her hand. "What do you want?"

"The girls aren't looking so perky," he said.

"What girls?"

"Your girls. Your tits. Your breasts. Your mammary appendages. Your humps. Your lovely lady lumps. Well, not so lovely anymore. You're flatter than Cameron these days."

"They're getting older just as fast as the rest of me, House, what's your point?"

"I'm staging an intervention," he said, leaning forward, suddenly serious. "Cuddy. You're not eating."

"I eat fine," she snapped.

"When was the last time you ate more than a salad?" House snapped back. "I looked in your kitchen. There's nothing there. Nothing in your trash can. You haven't been eating here except for show, you haven't been eating out. You're anorexic."

"You had no right," she began, low and angry, and he slammed his cane down on her coffee table.

"The hell I didn't! You're killing yourself and you think no one knows!" He was standing now, shouting. " Every one of your damned donors leaves here with the same uneasy expression. Wilson nearly cried at lunch yesterday. Your assistant did cry. And Nurse Previn came crawling to me three times this week begging me to do something, because you look like you stepped out of Auschwitz."

"You are still my employee," she said, furious but steady, "and I would prefer if you kept your opinions on my appearance to yourself."

"You need help," he snarled. "And I'm not going to let you commit suicide by malnutrition. This is not you, Cuddy, this is your goddamn grief starving you."

"I didn't know you'd done your psych qualification," she growled back. "I should give you a raise."

"Fuck!" he almost yelped, and hobbled over to her. "What do I have to do to get through to you? You are going to therapy. You are going on antidepressants. You are going to the hospital if that's what it takes, and I will fund it out of my own damn pocket if I have to. The hospital needs the real you, not this goddamned skeleton that calls itself Lisa Cuddy." He was in her face, much too close, leaning in until he almost overbalanced. His blue eyes were fierce, almost hypnotic. Her skin felt hot and tight stretched across her face. He looked as if he were going to shake her or slap her.

"House," she whispered, her throat suddenly catching. It felt raw, the after-sickness taste of bile and acid swallowed down, though she'd been drinking tea, so there was mint in it too. Her eyes stung.

He swore and kissed her hard. She kissed him back. He bit at her lips and curled his hand around the back of her head, his fingers twisted tight into her curls.

"I need the real you too, Cuddy," he said quietly. "Fight back. I need you to fight back."

"We'll go," she said, though she was suddenly so exhausted she could hardly stand. "We'll go. I'll call right now and set up my replacement for while I'm gone. But, House," she paused in her dialing. "I don't know if I can do it by myself."

"I wouldn't let you," he said, a little grimly. "I've got vacation. I'll be there. I've got the charger for my Gameboy and everything. All packed. I packed for you too."

"Thanks," she said.

"We'll talk about it later," he said, looking off across her courtyard. "One step at a time."

She dialed.


End file.
